Thursday, December 29, 2011

Michael A. Cohen is out with a good piece in Foreign
Policy debunking the foreign relations plank of the latest top-tier
Republican presidential candidate, Dr. Ron Paul. While he's cast himself
staunchly in the conservative/libertarian camp, Ron Paul is drawing interest -
and even some measure of support - from folks on the left; high-profile pundits
like Rachel Maddow and Bill Maher have both voiced their approval for his
foreign policy stances, so too have several of my more liberal/progressive
friends.Typically they cite Paul's
belief that the United States needs to lessen its military footprint around the
globe, along with his opposition to a possible war with Iran as factors that set
him apart from the Republican crowd and reasons for their support.

But in reality, these positions are less examples of “good
ideas” than they are simply of Paul having a more realistic view of America's
current geopolitical situation than do any of his fellow Republican
presidential candidates, all of whom have wrapped themselves in the cloak of
“American exceptionalism” and all the rhetoric that entails.The reality is that the United States spends too
much money it doesn't have on maintaining a military presence in places
that don't really affect life in the USA all that much, like say, Afghanistan,
where the US spends billions of dollars a month to prop up the kleptocracy of
Hamid Karzai.In this regard, the US is
following in the historic footsteps of other empires like the Roman and
British, which spent much money and effort in their declining years meddling in
the affairs of minor kingdoms at the fringes of Empire.As for Iran, it is clear that no military
intervention is going to achieve our desired result – the end of Tehran's
nuclear research program – nor does our military have the ability to now fight
a prolonged war after a solid decade of engagement in Iraq and
Afghanistan.Paul's position then is
more an accurate assessment of the global situation than it is an example of
groundbreaking “good ideas”.

And once you take a step past these Left-approved positions,
Paul quickly goes off the deep end.Paul
pushes an isolationist policy, one that would see the United States withdraw
from international treaties and bodies (Paul insists that he's not an
isolationist since he would allow free trade with foreign nations, though like
his defense of his 1980's era newsletters, it is a pretty weak
insistence).Under President Paul, the
United States would withdraw from treaties like NAFTA, alliances like NATO, and
organizations like the World Health Organization and the United Nations.So at a time when the world is becoming
“smaller”, and countries becoming more integrated, Paul's foreign policy would
amount to “hey you kids, get off my lawn”.For good or bad, the United States can't simply withdraw from the world,
not if we expect to maintain our level of international prestige, or keep our
economy running – the global economy works because countries are bound together
by a host of treaties and compacts, one can't then simply drop these
obligations and expect to keep your seat at the table. From the time of our
founding, presidents have understood that the United States needs to be engaged
with the world.As a nation, our first military
actions abroad were the “Barbary Wars” at the dawn of the 19th
century, where US sailors and marines fought with the pirates of the Barbary
Coast (current-day Libya) over their harassment of American merchant
vessels.200 years ago, presidents
realized you couldn't simply pull up the drawbridge and disengage from the
world, a fact that seems to have escaped Paul today.

From isolationism, Paul's foreign policy musings quickly go
into tinfoil hat land.Part of Paul's
opposition to NAFTA is a belief that it is the forerunner to the North American
Union – a merger of the US, Mexico and Canada under a single government with a
single currency allegedly to be called the “Amero”.This conspiracy theory has been floating
around the Internets since the mid-90s, though Paul has taken it seriously
enough to introduce legislation to prevent it from occurring (one does have to
wonder why, since clearly the United States would dominate such a union).But it's not just the NAU that wants to
subjugate the USA, the United Nations also
has it in for us. According to Paul, the UN is merely a front for a one world
government that will deprive Americans of their liberties, including their right
to own guns.Again, here Paul strays
into the realm of far-right conspiracy fans, since anyone who has ever had any
experience with the United Nations can tell you that the place is far too
disorganized to ever come up with a one-world anything.

A fundamental misunderstanding of two centuries of American
foreign policy and a penchant for taking far-right Internet ramblings way too
seriously, things to consider next time Ron Paul is put forward, like Jon
Stewart has done, as our “ideas guy”.

Mission Statement

Why A World View? Because I was frustrated by the lack of international news coverage in the American press. Sadly, foreign events usually only make the news when there’s a war or natural disaster someplace. But the world is more interconnected than ever, what happens on the other side of the globe can have a direct affect on your life. So I started this site to cover some of these stories missed by the mainstream media, and to provide analysis and context to others. And my goal is to do it in a way that you don’t feel like you need a PhD degree to understand what’s going on.